Six Degrees of Separation ~ Prophet Song

Paul Lynch
"Prophet Song" - 2023

#6Degrees of Separation:

from Prophet Song (Goodreads) to The Discovery of Slowness

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.

The starter book this month is "Prophet Song" by Paul Lynch, an Irish author who received the Booker Prize for this novel. The last ones I read were not to my taste, so I didn't even try to get it.

But since this book is not written by a British or an American author, I have tried to find some other foreign authors who were awarded prizes either in their country or internationally. I succeeded for all but one.

If you are interested, here is a description of this novel:

"A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internationally award-winning author

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together."

I start with the word Song.

Liao, Yiwu "Testimonials or: For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey Through a Chinese Prison" (CHN: Zheng-Ci) - 2000

Yiwu Liao received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2012.

García Márquez, Gabriel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (E: Cien años de soledad) - 1967

Gabriel García Márquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts".

Giordano, Paolo "The Solitude of Prime Numbers" (I: La solitudine dei numeri primi) - 2008

Paolo Giordano won the Premio Strega literary award with this, his first novel.

Simmonds, Jeremy "Number One in Heaven – The Heroes Who Died For Rock 'n' Roll" - 2006
A fantastic book about all the rock stars we loved and who left us far too early.

Mulisch, Harry "The Discovery of Heaven" (NL: De ontdekking van de hemel) - 1992
Harry Mulish received several international awards, and the NRC Handelsblad readers voted this novel the greatest Dutch book ever written.

Nadolny, Sten "The Discovery of Slowness" (GE: Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit) - 1983

Sten Nadolny received many German and Italian literature prizes, i.a. the prestigious  Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.

We always try to find a connection between the first and the last degree. I think a prophet could be very helpful in the search for slowness.

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